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15AVIS & Pennypacker, 

PRINTERS, 

No. 23 South Tenth Street, 
riiiiadelphia. 



At the meeting of the Council of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, held 
September 26th, 1881, the following memorial note was read by Mr. Samuel W. 
Pennypacker, and was ordered to be entered on the minutes. 



James Abram Garfield, twentieth President of the United 
States, was born in Orange Township, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, 
November 19th, 183 1, and died at Elberon, New Jersey, Sep- 
tember 19th, 1 88 1, from the effects of a wound by a pistol ball, 
fired by a worthless wretch in the city of Washington, July 2d, 
1881. 

Edward Garfield, the founder of the family in America, of 
sturdy Saxon stock, came from Chester, England, and settled 
in Watertown, Massachusetts, as early as 1630. He lived to be 
ninety-seven years old. The men of his race seem to have 
taken to themselves wives of equal physical vigor. The Phila- 
delphia Weekly Mercury, of February 3d, 1729-30, notices the 
death of Mrs. Garfield of Watertown, at the age of ninety years. 
Thus remotely may be traced that exuberant vitality which 
enabled the future President to smile hopefully and live for 
nearly three months with a shattered vertebra. 

In the local affairs of the New England burghs in which 
they lived, and through the colonial and Revolutionary wars, 
the Garfields bore an active if not a prominent part. 

Solomon, the great-grandfather of the President, removed 
to Otsego County, New York, and his grandson, Abram, obey- 



ing that fateful call, which has ever been coming from the forests 
and prairies of the West to young men of robust natures pos- 
sessing the instinct of thrift, went, when eighteen years old, to 
Ohio. There he married Eliza Ballon, of Huguenot ancestry, 
and died when James, his boy of promise, was under two years 
of age. When the head of a household is taken away ere his 
work is done, and the wife is left alone to provide for a family 
of young children, the struggle is necessarily one of hardship 
and is attended with much of privation and trial. These were 
the circumstances that surrounded the childhood and youth of 
Mr. Garfield; but many of the events of this early period, which 
were mere episodes in his career, have been given undue promi- 
nence. The American public is prone to believe that the 
men, who have moulded its destinies, have come up from 
the depths. It learns with peculiar delight that its popular 
heroes, its orators and statesmen, have been "The Mill Boy of the 
Slashes," the inhabitant of a "Log Cabin." the "Rail Splitter," 
and the "Canal Boy of the Towpath." To meet the exigencies 
of political campaigns, the good antecedents of Lincoln and 
Garfield have been passed over lightly or forgotten, while the 
sombre hues have been painted darker and the pits digged 
deeper. The lofty aspirations, the correct tastes, and the large 
capacity of Mr. Garfield, soon enabled him to overcome the 
obstacles that confronted him. He saved enough from his earn- 
ino-s to get the benefit of a course of schooling at the rural 
academy of his neighborhood. By teaching school, and by 
working as a carpenter and a harvest liand, he earned enough 
more to maintain himself for two years at Williams College. It 
is worthy of remark that he was fitted to enter the junior class, 
that he was one of the editors of the college paper, and that, 
at graduation, he took the class honor in metaphysics. 



5 



Up to this time, when he was twenty-five years of age, he had 
never cast a vote, but the principles of the Republican party, then 
just coming into existence, met with his approval and appealed 
to his sympathies; and in 1856 he made his first political speech. 
He had several years earlier delivered a number of sermons, as a 
lay preacher, in the Church of the Disciples, with which he was 
connected. On his return from college, he was chosen professor 
of ancient languages in the Hiram Eclectic Institute, and later 
principal of that academy. During the next three or four years, 
he lectured to his classes, delivered public addresses upon scientific 
and literary subjects, spoke on the stump through the political 
campaigns, and on Sundays preached. ^ 

In 1859, he was elected to the State Senate. While there 
he read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1861. The war, 
however, turned him aside from a professional career. 

He was appointed to the colonelcy of an Ohio regiment, and 
before 1863, through gallantry and skill at Sandy Valley, Pitts- 
burg Landing and Chickamauga, he had reached the position of 
chief of staff to General Rosecrans and the rank of major 
general. He was also a member of that celebrated court martial 
which tried and convicted Fitz John Porter. 

While in the military service, he was elected to Congress. 
He took his seat in 1863, and for the next eighteen years was 
continued in this position, representing a larger majority of voters 
than any other member of the House. These eighteen years 
constitute a period in which was enacted the most important 
legislation in the history of the country. The military measures 
of the war, the reconstruction of the seceded states, the raising 
and collection of immense revenues, the financial policy to be 
pursued, the resumption of specie payments and the disputed suc- 
cession to the presidency, were among the problems successfully 



solved. Certainly, statesmen, no where, were ever called upon 
to grapple with questions of greater moment. It is enough to 
indicate the strength of Mr. Garfield that he was one of the 
military committee during the war, chairman of the committee 
on appropriations, afterwards a member of the electoral commis- 
sion in 1876, and became the recognized leader of his party in 
the House. The Ohio Legislature, in 1880, elected him to the 
United States Senate, for the term beginning November 4th, 
1881. 

No party convention ever had it in its power to affect more 
seriously the institutions of the country than that which assem- 
bled in Chicago, in 1880, to nominate a candidate for the presi- 
dency. A few months earlier, the selection of ex-President Grant 
had seemed inevitable. For two years, a banker in Philadephia, 
with a taste for higher politics, had been urging the nomination 
of Mr. Garfield in the columns of the Penn Monthly and making 
combinations looking to that result. On the first ballot, Mr. 
Garfield had but one vote, that of a friend of the Philadelphia 
banker. On the thirty-sixth ballot he was nominated. After a 
close struggle he was elected, and so it happened that he was a 
member of the House, a member elect of the Senate, and President 
elect of the United States at the same time; a distinction which 
never fell to man before. The policy of his administration had 
barely been defined, its strength had just been successfully tested, 
when an assassin crept up behind him and gave him a fatal 
wound. 

Though his rule was brief, there are two things which will 
make it historic. His elevation marked the dissipation of that 
power dangerous to the republic, which was concentrated during 
the war, and in sympathy with him the men of the North and 
the men of the South were for the lirst time thoroughly reunited. 



7 



Mr. Garfield was a man of great physical power. He was tall, 
with broad shoulders, a deep chest and a large head, while a 
continuous flow of animal spirits indicated his perfect health. In- 
tellectually, his most striking characteristic was his immense 
breadth. It is given to but a very small number of men to 
succeed in any pursuit. Many are called, but i^^v are chosen. 
The sea of life lines its shores with the shells of failures and 
things dead. Mr. Garfield was a scholar learned in the languages 
of the past, a preacher of the Gospel, a soldier in command on 
the battle field, a student of literature, finance and politics, an 
orator and a statesman; and in all of these diverse paths 
he reached distinction. He wrote a graceful poem, discussed 
geological problems with the professors, examined into the local 
history of his neighborhood, and with the same ease he met 
the masters of debate in Congress upon abstract questions of 
state. Nature, which has provided the most powerful of animals 
with an organ of such strength that it can uproot trees, and of 
such delicacy that it can untie knots, seems to have endowed 
him with mental capacities of like fle.xibility. 

He was brave and generous. When the stoutest of the 
partisan leaders threw the glove in his face, he picked it up 
quietly, and his antagonist disappeared from the arena. He met 
his fate like a man. In his long struggle with death, there was 
much that was sublime. He uttered no repinings; he ex- 
pressed no resentment toward the thing that had struck him ; 
there came from his bed of suffering no cry, save that sad 
longing to see once more the green fields of his home. When 
he was elected to the presidency, it seemed that the better days 
for the republic were come; for surely much was to be expected 
from his enlarged mind, his great soul, and his long training in 
statecraft. He laid his strong hand upon the wheel, and he is 



gone. It is his own thought that men affect but for a little 
while our institutions. Like the raindrops, they may pass 
through the shining bow and add to its lustre; but when they 
have sunk the proud arch still in glory spans the sky. May it 
prove to be true. "Put him up higher!" cried a voice, when 
he arose to speak in the Chicago convention. The voice proved 
to be that of a prophet. It is a consolation to the American 
people now that he is being mourned as ruler never was before, 
to know that in that higher sphere to which he has been raised, 
he is at last at rest from the bitter pain and the hopeless 



struggle. 



The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, upon the day of his 
funeral, when every city in the land is draped in black, and all 
trade is suspended, notes this brief outline of his career and 
meagre sketch of his character. 



